£500 thread

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£500 thread

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You have a budget of £500 to spend on a used car. It will be a daily driver, can be diesel or petrol and any make/model, no preference on size catergory.

What would you be inclined to look for in the first instance?

The original Clio springs to mind for me, interesting to hear what others would search for first.
 
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alfa 155 2.0 8v £500 should get an ok one, solid engine great looks.

any big early 90's luxury car. jag,merc etc. though these would probably need expensive work though you may get a good 'un

some volvo?

renault 9 16v? quite a few similar late 80's early 90's hot hatches can be bought for less than £500.

depends what you want it for, how much you travel and how much you got to run and repair it
 
£500? thats loads to spend!

i have proven twice you can run a car bought for less than £100 for months with no problems
 
I agree, my cheapest cars have been free, my best one though was a Granada Scorpio for 100 notes that I did 5k miles in and then I sold for a profit after spending nothing at all on it.

I also just got a 1986 BMW 528i for 167 quid off eBay, put 250 quid into it and now its valued at 1750 quid, 500 quid is a huge wedge of cash! Make it 250 to make it more interesting!
 
just been in the same boat, as I put a rock through the sump of my punto JTD (long story.......),and had to get mobile quickly.For £375, i bought an immaculate, and i mean immaculate M reg cavalier sri 16 valve, mot'd till april next year, and taxed 'till feb, and, amazingly a full service history. There are plenty of tatty ones around, but this one looks no more than around 5 years old.

Plenty of decent stuff around for £500, but also a lot, i mean A LOT of utter crap, take your time, you wil lfind something decent.
 
Hate threads like this, cant stop looking at bag of **** cars that i want to buy now! :devil:
 
I had to do this a few years back when I bought my flat, and needed to liquidate the money I had tied up in the car at the time for my deposit. Bye bye sports car, hello shed.

My £500 bought me a Citroen ZX 1.9 diesel, an unwanted part ex from a local dealer. 180K on the clock, flat white (and I mean flat.. no shine at all), but the interior was pretty much immaculate and it had FSH, every 10K since new. It wasn't pretty and it was dog slow, but it ran like a swiss watch and even though I thrashed it mercilessly I couldn't make it do less than 50 to the gallon.

12 months later I sold it on (with 189K showing) for £650.. a modest profit, but one of the few cars I've sold for more than I paid. I can't say it was exciting transport, but it did the job I needed at the time. If I found myself in a similar situation, I'd be very happy to find another one like that..

Cheers,

Plug
 
For £500 you should look at Marea's, really underrated car.

I would look for an old VW Passat with a Tdi engine if you can't find a Marea you like.

If all you're looking for is reliability then a Toyota Hilux with a crew cab, indestructible as proved on Top Gear.
 
For £500 you should look at Marea's, really underrated car.

Yes. I loved ours. Brilliant.

306 TD's not a bad call either - angel's ex-husband's just got one and it appears to be indestructible even given its mileage (best part of 105k)
 
Years ago I had a Uno with a diesel lump. Fun to drive and, suprisingly, bags of room for me.
I've also had a metro. Once I'd had the engine to bits & cleaned it up/tuned it, it went like $hit off a shovel - bags of fun to drive & again, plenty of interior room for me.
My first car was a datsun 100A, again, bags of interior room, very nippy & fun to drive.
Had a Polski Fiat 125P which was like driving a tank - really comfortable & 'interesting' to drive.

I imagine any of these can be had for a song.
I'm rather intrigued by the 'eco' cars, small leccy vehicles. Be interesting to see how the electric motor propels a lump of fibreglass.
Also tempted to buy a small petrol-engined bicycle (although not sure how street legal these are).
 
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